PASSED TO MR. BEVAN
Stit,—Will the Civil Service ever let its right hand know what its left is doing? A number of homeless old people who have been living together since they were evacuated from Hull during the war are now in the hands of the Ministry of Health. After three years of searching, a house was at last found as a permanent hostel for them in Hull. The scheme has been adopted by the Hull City Council and the plans approved ; there only remains the permit for the necessary alterations to come from the Ministry itself. This permit has been delayed seven months, and is still held back. Though it has been passed in the main, the Ministry continue to think of minor details one by one which need scme amend- ment, and each amendment causes a further delay which can apparently be overcome only by the exertions of a Member of Parliament.
Meanwhile, the old people have been in a Ministry of Health evacua- tion hostel in Scarborough. This is now needed by the Ministry as a children's convalescent home. So the old people are turned out, separated from one another and sent to various hostels and institutions in Yorkshire and Lancashire. For them this is the final blow after a long series of disappointments over their promised return to Hull. They are hopeless and embittered. Hull has been their one idea of home for six homeless years, and the prospect of a return their chief tie with life. Some have died in the past seven years. It is doubtful how many will survive next winter. The situation is an urgent one for them, and it is not un- important to the Ministry of Health, who can only find them a continued encumbrance in future plans for their evacuation hostels. Yet some paralysis " in the work " produces this deadlock where neither urgency can make itself felt. It is a nightmare which must haunt the most convinced advocate of State control at times: the nightmare of a vacuum where no appeal can be heard and no action take effect—until ton late.— Yours faithfully, JANE MooRE.
36 Canonbury Square, Islington.
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